The volume of broadcast-quality, long-form documentary content available online is growing, fast. But despite the array of platforms, aggregation services and websites that are eager to work with content creators, many documentary-makers are still struggling to effectively monetise this growing internet audience.

"It's Armageddon, culturally," documentary-maker Ben Lewis, whose credits include Art Safari, says. "At a time when broadcasters are spending and scheduling less, there's still no clear way of making money online; platforms hold on to most of the revenue, aggregators' fees are sky high, and what money you do make is nowhere near enough to fund your next film," he explains.

Lewis generates revenue selling DVDs and streaming content via his own website. He is also selling via Amazon and hopes to soon have his content listed on iTunes. "The only way forward is to distribute your content across as many platforms as you can at a modest percentage, uploading content yourself," he says. "Fifty outlets each delivering as little as £20 a week would be serious revenue compared to the trickle coming in today."

It's a principle endorsed by Adam Chapnick, chief executive of documentaries aggregator Distribber – though he takes issue with the suggestion a service such as his can't offer value for money. He says that "hard cost deductions for coding and marketing a film" and then a revenue share of up to 50% for every dollar earned does "make it hard for a film-maker to make money". However, Chapnick points out that Distribber's model is not a revenue share but a flat fee for its service of representing documentary makers to platform owners, such as Netflix and iTunes.

Other service providers helping documentary-makers keep more of their online revenues include PayWizard, part of MGt, a technology company with a solid record in customer relationship management. PayWizard offers content creators a single system to collect pay-per-view and subscription revenues across a diverse array of platforms. It also offers open access to all associated data relating to what content is consumed. "Documentary-makers want greater control over their own destiny," PayWizard's marketing director, Stephen Petheram, explains. "User data currently kept by iTunes and other platforms is essential to content creators – not just to optimise marketing and distribution of their content, but to help shape what they produce next."

Maximising revenue doesn't just have to be about spreading content across every available platform, though. Documentaries distributor and producer Journeyman Pictures, for example, focuses just on pay-per-view via its own website and ad sales via its own YouTube channel to supplement traditional broadcast distribution sales. Through careful topical rotation of the 1,000 films available on its YouTube channel at any one time, plus email marketing to different user groups, the company has so far chalked up 205m YouTube views. "Today, 25% of our revenue comes from online," says Journeyman founder Mark Stucke. "Ad revenue is now around $25,000 [£15,400] a month and we estimate there's an additional $50-60,000 of programme sales (to broadcasters) we might not otherwise have got without being on YouTube. Discoverability is what's key."This article was produced in association with Crossover Labs and Sheffield Doc/Fest